Investigation of Small-Scale and Multipath Fading of Radio Wave Propagation in a Complex Building Environment

Abstract

In this study, an investigation into the small-scale and multipath fading of radio wave propagation in a complex building environment has been conducted by using Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti Nigeria, College of Engineering building as a case study. The study utilizes sliding correlator channel sounding measurement techniques, implemented on NI USRP 2920 modules by using GNU radio software. Moreover, single-input and single-output configurations have been employed by setting one module as a transmitter and the other one as a receiver, propagating at a carrier frequency of 1.2 GHz. Five scenarios within the first floor of the building have been considered and various cases in each one of the scenarios are either outdoor-to-indoor, indoor-to-outdoor, indoor or outdoor measurement. The analysis of the scatter plot of the maximum delay spread against the distance of experiments for the line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight cases show that analytical expression cannot be obtained due to the complexity of the building structure. The result obtained also shows that the maximum delay spread values are between 575 μs and 1023 μs, which points to the existence of a frequency selective fading condition that causes intersymbol interference and data rate reduction.